Toccoa Falls is a

waterfall A waterfall is a point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf. Waterfalls can be formed in several wa ...

with a vertical drop of on the campus of

Toccoa Falls College Toccoa Falls College is a private Christian college in Toccoa Falls, Georgia. The campus occupies , bordering the Chattahoochee National Forest and is home to Toccoa Falls, a high waterfall. It is affiliated with the Christian and Missionary ...

in Stephens County,

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

. ''Toccoa'' comes from the

Cherokee The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, t ...

word "Tagwâ′hĭ", meaning "

Catawba Catawba may refer to: *Catawba people, a Native American tribe in the Carolinas *Catawba language, a language in the Catawban languages family *Catawban languages Botany *Catalpa, a genus of trees, based on the name used by the Catawba and other N ...

place" or "beautiful".

Legend

The land around Toccoa Falls was traded to White settlers in 1783, and written accounts of the falls began to appear in publications in the nineteenth century. White folk tales about Toccoa Falls are recounted in the writings of

Elizabeth F. Ellet Elizabeth Fries Ellet ( Lummis; October 18, 1818 – June 3, 1877) was an American writer, historian and poet. She was the first writer to record the lives of women who contributed to the American Revolutionary War. Born Elizabeth Fries Lummis, ...

and

Charles Montgomery Skinner Charles Montgomery Skinner (15 March 1852 – 1907) was an American writer. Newspaper career Skinner was born in Victor, New York. His career in literature and journalism included editorship of the '' Brooklyn Eagle''. His study of the pap ...

. Both Ellet and Skinner's stories portray tension between the White settlers and the Native Americans of the area, describing the White settlers as victims of the Native Americans' violence. The stories, which Ellet and Skinner both independently suggest are apocryphal, involve a theme of White women tricking groups of men to walk off of Toccoa Falls, although the men are Native American in Skinner's story whereas in Ellet's, the White woman has been forced by Native Americans to trick her fellow White settlers. In the 1890s, ethnographer

James Mooney James Mooney (February 10, 1861 – December 22, 1921) was an American ethnographer who lived for several years among the Cherokee. Known as "The Indian Man", he conducted major studies of Southeastern Indians, as well as of tribes on the Gr ...

compiled myths of the Cherokee while living with them for several years. Mooney recounts a story about Toccoa Falls told to him by his half-Cherokee assistant in which, when the White newcomers saw Toccoa Falls for the first time, they saw a Cherokee woman walking underneath the water who then suddenly appeared on top of the falls after a moment. Mooney's assistant says that the woman in the story "must have been one of the

Nûñnë'hï The Nûñnë'hï are a race of immortal spirit people in Cherokee mythology. In the Cherokee language, ''Nûñnë'hï'' literally means "The People Who Live Anywhere", but it is often translated into English as "The People Who Live Forever", or si ...

," a race of spirit people in Cherokee mythology.

Dam break

During the early morning hours of November 6, 1977, after five days of almost continual rain, the dam that impounded the waters of Kelly Barnes Lake (located above the Toccoa Falls College campus) burst, and 176 million gallons of water surged through the campus below in the space of a few minutes. Most of the college personnel who lived in the path of the flood were asleep at the time, and 39 of them were swept to their deaths in the raging waters of Toccoa Creek. The dam was not rebuilt.Historic U.S. Dam Failures – DamSafety.org

References

External links

View of Toccoa Falls from 1929
From Vanishing Georgia, Georgia Archives, University System of Georgia. Web. May 19, 2016.
View of Toccoa Falls from 1885
From Atlanta History Photograph Collection, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center. Web. June 4, 2016.
Toccoa Fall[s], Height 186 feet, Toccoa, Ga.
Historic Postcard Collection, RG 48-2-5, Georgia Archives, Digital Library of Georgia. Web. June 4, 2016. *
View of Toccoa Falls from 1875
From Stephen A. Schwarzman Building / Photography Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, New York Public Library. Original source: Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views.
View of Toccoa Falls
from the David Lewis Earnest photographic collection, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, The University of Georgia Libraries. {{coord, 34, 35, 46, N, 83, 21, 36, W, display=title Landforms of Stephens County, Georgia Waterfalls of Georgia (U.S. state) Tourist attractions in Stephens County, Georgia